Designer/Illustrator for refreshing branding & design

I'm looking for a skilled designer/illustrator to help refresh the visual identity and GUI of my hobby project.

While I'm building the platform myself, design is not my core strength, I now want to elevate the branding, UI, colors, typography and overall visual experience.

About the project:

db-academy is an online education platform dedicated to database engineering, with a strong focus on hands-on labs and advanced techniques. (Inspired by codecrafters.io) The project serves learners who are serious about database engineering and technical topics.

You'll be working on refreshing the branding and GUI so that the experience feels polished, modern, engaging, and aligned with the tech-savvy target audience.

Target audience:
- Developers, database engineers, architects who are comfortable with technical content
- Learners who are serious about database development and want advanced, hands-on experience

The vibe should convey professionalism, depth, trustworthiness, but also be engaging and modern (not overly corporate in a boring way)

Scope of work:

- Develop a refreshed brand identity: new color palette, typography, iconography/illustrations if applicable
- Apply the refreshed branding to the GUI of the website: home page, course overview pages, sign-in/up flows, dashboard elements
- Design polished UI mock-ups or high-fidelity prototypes for review
- Provide design assets (colors, fonts, icons/illustrations, UI components) that can be handed over and implemented (or I can implement)
- Possibly supporting small illustration work (e.g., hero illustrations, banners, icons) to make the platform visually appealing

I'm available to discuss layouts, feedback, iterate design, but am not expecting full frontend development, the focus is on design/branding/visuals.

What I'm looking for in you:
- A portfolio of previous web UI / branding / illustration work especially for tech or education platforms (please share)
- Strong sense of typography, color theory, clean modern UI design
- Ability to produce both branding assets and UI visuals
- Good communication and willingness to iterate based on feedback
- You should be comfortable providing design deliverables for implementation (e.g., Figma/Sketch/AdobeXD, assets in SVG/PNG etc).

Because this is a hobby project with modest budget, I'm looking for good value and willingness to collaborate flexibly.

Next steps & deliverables:
- Please send your portfolio or links to past work (especially branding + UI/illustration)
- Brief proposal: your approach to this project, estimated timeline, your rate or budget expectation
- Once we agree, deliverables will include branding guidelines (colors, type, icons, illustrations) + UI mock-ups (key pages) + final assets for hand-off.

Budget & timeline:
- Please submit your proposed budget (or hourly rate) and timeline estimate.
- The ideal start is as soon as we both agree, with first drafts within ~2-3 weeks and full hand-off within ~4-6 weeks (flexible depending on your schedule and depth of work).

I'll review and respond to candidates who fit best, and we'll jump into a brief call or chat to align expectations before starting.